Debate gripes are admission of media bias

Ed Morrissey:

Politico reporters John Harris and Jim VandeHei review the outrage from offended journalists over the ABC debate this week with a particularly jaundiced eye. They claim it proves exactly what they have themselves experienced in their work — starry-eyed reporters who wind up having to be “de-toxed” from their crushes on Barack Obama:

In fact, the balance of political questions (15) to policy questions (13) was more substantive than other debates this year that prompted no deluge of protests. The difference is that this time there were more hard questions for Obama than for Clinton.

Moreover, those questions about Jeremiah Wright, about Obama’s association with 1960s radical William Ayers, about apparent contradictions between his past and present views on proven wedge issues like gun control, were entirely in-bounds. If anything they were overdue for a front-runner and likely nominee.

If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient, and uncertain.

The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.

(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and the Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through de-tox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)

(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama’s speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he’s on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)

Harris and VandeHei worry that this phenomenon will damage the media industry much more than the political process. They have four main concerns about the Obama-crush they see in their colleagues, especially in the irrational vitriol that followed a debate that didn’t appreciably differ from most of the rest on both sides of the partisan divide this year. How many times did Mike Huckabee have to answer questions on evolution, for instance, or Mitt Romney about his gardeners and his Mormonism? The concerns are:

• The adoption of personal points of view in reporting news
• The rise and influence of a “liberal echo chamber”
• Lines blurring between journalism and advocacy, such as with HuffPo
• A demand to cover politics in Utopian terms instead of in reality

...

There is more.

This is an interesting admission and I think their points are valid. The hysteria of the left over what seem to me to be reasonable questions confirms my belief that they want to invalidate any issues that do not fit their frame for the election. You can also see this in Obama's arrogant assertion that "people don't care about " the questions raised in the early part of the debate.

He is clearly wrong on that point. Liberals may not care about it and would prefer to avoid those issues but there are many voters like myself if think the questions were overdue for a candidate who has been largely given a free ride all year. The fact that he and many liberal writers were whining about those questions confirms in my mind that the questions were relevant. I am always suspicious of people who want to avoid questions. It suggest the answer to those questions would not help their case.

Send those liberal reporters to detox.